Our first performance called Mau Apa? was a hit!
A traditional market called Pesar Suryoputran…. not far from the Kraton (the King’s Palace), where desiccated Ibu’s sell their fresh fruit and salted fish, where people wear traditional dress – women baring their shoulders in floral frocks, men in batik wraps and little black pasty shaped hats. Where the prices are local and any Bole (foreigner) in the street is phenomenon. This is where we first performed:
May Apa?
What do you want?
The performance consists of the banter between two adult puppets Yu Brejel and Bejo who have a stall at the market. They come to market to sell the unsellable. Love, faith, dreams and other things! Who will “buy” what and why? What do they want? Mau Apa?
The two old friends Yu Brejel and Bejo also have their very own stories, of found and lost wants, to share with their audience and all for Gratis!
This is the first collaboration, between myself and Paper Moon Puppets director Ria Tri Sulistyani & actor Yosafat “Jordana” Diaswikarta …, based on our mutual interests in performances in public spaces that question social norms. And this is a big one! What do we want and why?
Cultural analyst Ken Myers said "Tell me what you want and I’ll tell you who you are." If this is true then what we want defines us individuals, families, communities and countries, and artists too.
What I “want”ed from this project is to go into process with Ria and Jordonana…to deliver a performance in a public context, as a playful way into a culture, as a loose experiment in which we cannot separate ourselves…right?
Ria wanted to explore a devised theatre process – making characters, stories and performance from a series of improvisations. She was really keen to take art into public spaces – an uncommon thing here. Although there is much more art in the public than many Australian towns and cities…buskers at the big market are a’plenty from roving musos to a troupe of transgender women crooning their songs.
We also both wanted to create a performance designed for Yogyakarta but also translatable to any country. We’d love to perform this show here and then in Australia…then wherever we happen to meet again!
The idea came about from my practice in Augusto Boal’s work including invisible theatre and Ria’s work using puppets on trains and in the streets. We combined these to create, what I’ve clumsily dubbed, Re –Visible theatre. Making the invisible visible once more. To explore publicly in a non-threatening, playful way about the motivations we have for living.
Invisible theatre invites participation without the audience knowing. Re-Visible theatre invites an audience to partake in the full knowledge that this is theatre happening in a public, real, context. Puppets are extraordinarily well placed to welcome participation; somehow people forget there is an actor behind the puppet! This assumption led to some really interesting stories…..but that’s for later…..
The show:
We have two aspects to what we will “sell” – the big, universal Wants, e.g. Love, Power, Faith… and the locally specific Wants, e.g. Good Health, Menantu (a good match for your child) or Kurus - to be thin. This is really interesting to me, as this is where I discovered what is most important to people here in Yogya – what they aspire to and need. More importantly I see it is a subtle thing…which I may never truly “get”. In the local Market we were interested to see whether the Naik Haji (a trip to Mecca) or Menantu would be bought…something Ria says is very specific to Javanese people in the more traditional market.
We used already constructed, wonderful, puppets (boneka). One is a full sized man, the other a woman who is a waist up rod puppet, both have one hand for the actors’. We used an improvisation based process to construct the work. Actors Jordana and Ria kindly let me direct them so that we could draw out the best in the concept…I led rehearsals including games, trust and impro exercises and was the outside eye and the editing knife! Ria is a beautiful puppet performer with a superb kineasethic connectedness to her puppets…and Jordana was very quick to pick up ideas in a process very new to him.
Devising of content took place through structured improvisations… short exercises based on a simple rules around which the actor makes things up spontaneously….from that we drew the best text and ideas and repeated until we found a loose script around which to work. The text includes stories from the puppet characters lives – like Bridgil’s story of loosing her family through a disease in her village – metaphors about the subjects and many jokes!
I found new connections between theatre exercises and puppet performance – particularly the sensitivity of the breath. Watching Ria and Jordnana, who both are experienced at puppet manipulation, play and really push the connection between breath and the puppets’ physicality made it clear that the breath as a puppeteer play no less a role in fact as in more conventional acting - when the puppets changed their breathe the puppets take on a real life – not a performative life but an essence. I think of when I watched a sheep die and when it is a dying breathing sheep and when it was simply a collection of materials with no breath. Well this was the reverse – material becoming alive through breath. Really sensitive work. We began this by using a game called the wind that shakes the barely…a breath and touch exercise in pairs where one performer touches key spots on the partners body. The partner has their eyes closed and both exhale as they touch or are being touched. The partner must respond to the touch like the wind shaking the barely. Ria and Jordana pushed this to the amount of pressure of touch and the related amount of exhale of breathe and also physical response
This was a new process for Paper Moon Puppets exploring character through improvisation...but what was new and compelling for me is constructing a performance in another language…where we relied upon my teaspoon sized knowledge of Bahasa Indonesia, Jordana’s pretty good English and Ria’s excellent translating. But still the show is in a combination of Indonesian and Javanese. Funnily enough this gave me the sort of space I don’t’ usually get directing…the space to really see the external story and the feel the impact of that on me as the audience. The downside of course is I don’t get the full impact of the audience’s interaction with the puppets and how the work develops with that – tidda apa apa! No Worries!
We trialed the show with Ria’s friends and the response was positive – funny, bagus! Great! We also received useful feedback about when to use Javanese and when not and to whom; Javanese being for older people or for ways of saying specific things. Javanese is a much richer language than Bahasa Indonesian so I am told and there are ways of saying things in very roundabout ways!
Ria was concerned that there may not be participation in the shows however Ria already had connections in the local market and an insight into how we could best work in that context. We also researched the venues as part of our devising process…to locate ourselves in that space and context more clearly. Under Ria’s advice we aimed to construct a performance that was intrinsically interesting (with it’s own narrative, relationships and events) but invites participation.
What happened: Any apprehensions about a reticent audience immediately disappeared into the morning smog! Before I had even set up the table, stools and labelled boxes people were coming over and asking about what was happening…taking the programme and hanging out. One man turned my Tutup – closed sign around to Buka – Open – the audience were keen. Then through the dusty morning light on a becak (a bicycle taxi) came the puppets. Within moments of the puppets sitting down the keen man – who looked remarkably like Jack Nicholson in a traditional stylish black jacket leaped into the audience seat and the show was off to a great start! The seat barely stayed empty as young and old, shyly or with confidence, took the seat and asking for what they wanted. What surprised Ria was the old folk coming up and sharing so sincerely what they wanted – their stories of loss of health (one woman had a skin disease) or desire for a good match for their children. The whole thing was watched by stallholders and listened to by passersby. It was gila – crazy with cars, motorbikes, kids, becaks and photographers all mixed up like a sambal!
The actors shut up shop (toko) for a few minutes for a quick drink and a brief chat with me…sweaty but loving it they dived back in for another 20 minutes to end the hour long show. The seat remained red hot especially when people sensed the show was concluding – just one more, just one more!
Participation didn’t stop there – audiences talked amongst themselves – what would you want – money, eh? They asked about the show - if we were selling traditional medicine – some seemed to get the concept of the performance but still believed the little colourful biscuits the puppets gave at the end of each performance were really medicines!
One Ibu prayed before she took her gift into her mouth. What she wanted was really strong for her. Interestingly, Haik Naji and Power were not chosen. Guess what the most popular want was? - Not Love as I might expect but Faith and Health!
Performance Two - The Sunday Market at the University (UGM)
A different sort of performance altogether- huge crowds who wanted to watch and not take part – those who did were friends and they took an acting role (voluntarily) which meant the performers gestures and jokes became bigger and bigger for the crowd to hear and see. This personal performance became more public. Sometimes over 6 people deep, the crowd was hungry for the show and laughed and eagerly took the programmes I handed out. Most areas were covered including Naik Haji (not so in the last market) but it was more for fun. The essence of the show changed to meet the context. Maybe if we had a tent and a limited number of people could watch it would have had a more intimate feel. Security became concerned about the masses of people nearly blocking the street. And the bag selling women next stall along were not so impressed. We moved away slightly and wrapped up a little earlier.
What this project did show was the interest in public performance – and the acceptance of it as just that – in the Sunday market – a show to watch not to be involved in…and in the local market people saw it more as a part of life…where they could freely interact (and maybe even get some medicine!)
What the two shows actually revealed, if the smiles were anything to go by, is that Art is the medicine!!
